The Compass

by Tammy Kling

  The last words she said to me were catalogued in my brain, right below the last words Boo had said, and then Lacy. I was keeping a list now, an electronic Rolodex of last words.

  I love you daddy.

  How’s our baby girl?

  And then standing there in the airport . . .

  “Some people who have decades to live are already dead inside, Jonathan. Right now I feel more alive than ever. Be alive, Jonathan, not one of the walking dead. Lessons of this sort cannot be taught; they come from one’s own struggle to find truth.”

  The taxi ride from the airport had taken us ten miles to the nearest cabin. The road wound deep into the forest through a row of tall maples, ending at a small gravel drive.

  The cabin was more than I’d expected. A stone walk led up to the door, and a small garden with brightly colored flowers surrounded it. There were white pines everywhere, and it was wrapped in complete silence.

  It had a traditional log exterior, and someone had painted the door candy apple red. Above the door was a handcrafted wood plaque with an inscription.

  Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’ intrate.

  I pulled the key from under a brown welcome mat that had a smiling beaver on it, slid the key into the lock, and entered, stepping into a small open space that resembled a Thomas Kinkade painting I’d once purchased for Lacy, called “The End of a Perfect Day,” with a woodstove, tin roof, and through the back window, a canoe visible in the back near the edge of a pond.

  I felt a peace I hadn’t felt in the desert.

  Now I walked across the hard wood floor, my bare feet feeling the rawness.

  How’s our baby girl?

  I felt a sense that I’d been there before, but I chalked it up to the comfort I’d always felt when I had visited my grandfather’s cabin on the lake, decades earlier.

  I love you daddy.

  Some things remain in your DNA forever. I opened the door and walked outside again, stepping onto the small wood porch. I observed the way some of the trees swayed deeply, while others stood rigid. Like humans, each one moved slightly differently, changing with the shift of the wind.

  Be alive, Jonathan.

  I sat in the rocking chair and imagined those who had done the same thing a hundred years before, imagining the lives and messages we receive like one eternal thread, all connected. I thought of my brother, who had loved hunting and fishing in the mountains with our grandfather when we were young, while I had been content to skip rocks in the stream, unable to stomach the thought of killing a deer.

  I considered calling him, but there was no telephone, and even if there were, what would I say? Everything was different now.

  He’d be unable to understand my desire to escape. He’d want to talk me into coming home, talk me back off the ledge of this new journey and into the normalcy of my abnormal existence.

  But what would I go back to now?

  I fell asleep again in the chair, sometime after four in the afternoon, and when I awoke, it was dark and the wind howled through trees. I had much to do, but couldn’t. Much to say, but couldn’t. Much to feel, but couldn’t. The shrink back in California had said I’d entered a “dorsal vagal shutdown,” which in plain civilian terms meant that I was frozen. The answer, she’d said, was social engagement via the ventral vagus nerve, accomplished by laughing or connecting with others.

  Everyone, it seemed, had an answer.

  My Christian friend Bob told me that isolation was the tool of the devil. That, although it seems like a gift, it’s also a curse when we become too inwardly focused, withdrawn from life, disconnected. He’d said that the enemy can get to your emotions only after you’ve been isolated, a strategy used by the greatest war generals of all time. Isolate, then defeat.

  “How long you staying?”

  The voice startled me, and I turned.

  The man walked with a limp, one leg looking to be shorter than the other, and he was wearing a flannel shirt and high rubber boots over jeans. He shifted his weight to his good leg as he ambled up the path toward the cabin, stopping once to catch his breath.

  “I been waitin’ for you,” he said, approaching the deck. He carried a long shovel, the end covered in mud.

  “Really? But I . . . ” I was about to say that I’d just arrived, that he couldn’t have possibly known I’d be there because I hadn’t known it myself. But my energy ran out. I had no more to give, no more explanations. He was a caretaker, it seemed. He’d leave the wood, shovel something, and be gone soon.

  “I’ve got wood in the truck,” he said, “to load up the stove.”

  “Go for it,” I answered.

  The man pulled the chair from the other side of the deck and dragged it over, slowly and painfully. I considered giving him a hand, but despite the apparent discomfort, he seemed to be doing fine. I guessed that he’d been there for years, probably the employee of some charitable and wealthy land baron who owned this cabin and the magnificent property surrounding it. The land, at least, would be worth about four million, I estimated.

  “My name’s Peter,” he said, taking a seat and extending his hand. “After Saint Peter. Or Peter the Great. You choose.” He laughed then. “You here for long?” He had a slight accent that I couldn’t place.

  “I don’t know, Peter.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I may stay a month. I may stay a year.”

  “It’ll be about five days, I suppose,” he said, checking his watch.

  I glanced at him curiously.

  “You have someone else checking in in five days?”

  “Nope.”

  With that, he stood slowly and entered the cabin. Through the open door I watched him walk into the kitchen and open a cabinet. There were a few cans of food there, and a flashlight. He reached for something and started back out.

  “I keep some Jack in the cupboard,” he said. “Want some?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t drank since ’91, when I almost wrapped my car around a tree after a birthday party for a friend. I hadn’t been an alcoholic, but it was the moment that woke me up to the fact that I was seconds away from it. Being something and not being that thing, I had discovered, can be separated by a very fine line.

  Peter poured me a shot of Jack Daniel’s anyway from the large vintage bottle and poured himself one, too. He handed me a shot glass, and I took it, downing the harsh dry liquid all in one sip.

  “Jack Daniel’s is a legendary company,” he said, settling into the other chair again. “The founder saved a small town with the distillery. The first bottle he produced cost less than two dollars.”

  “You a fan of trivia?” I asked.

  “I’m a lifelong learner,” he said, “and I like to know all I can.” He poured me another shot and I drank it fast, feeling the burn down the back of my throat.

  “So is that all you do? Sit up here and drink Jack Daniel’s in the forest?”

  He glanced over as if he were pondering his response.

  “Sometimes it’s a nice end to a perfect day,” he said.

  I looked at him and wondered. Something about this journey was becoming surreal. In the beginning, I hadn’t known where I was going. I’d bought a ticket to somewhere I’d never been, walked for miles, and ended up in the desert with a woman who had less than a month to live. Now, here I was in a cabin at the opposite end of the country with someone entirely different.

  Where would I be tomorrow?

  The whole of it was hard to ignore.

  “You need something for that wound on your face?” he asked.

  I shook my head and instinctively touched it with my hand.

  “Nah,” I said. “You take care of this place?” I asked.

  Peter nodded. He leaned back and with some effort hoisted his rubber boots high onto the porch railing.

  “Do you know how I officially check in?” I asked. “I know they left the key under the mat, but I assume they’ll want a credit card at some point.”
<
br />   “We’ll get one from you on the day you leave,” he said. “It’s pretty laid back around here.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Where you from?”

  “Italy, originally. My parents were Italian immigrants, but I grew up in an orphanage upstate. I like it out here in the wilderness. It’s lonely at times, but quiet, that’s for sure.”

  “Are you married?”

  He shook his head. “Oh no, not for me.”

  “Is it hard work up here in the winters, with the snow and all?” I asked. “Do the owners have a lot of vacationers coming in and out?”

  “I’m the owner,” he said.

  I looked at him and laughed.

  “Yeah . . . right.”

  Peter shrugged and poured another shot glass of Jack. Then he looked at me curiously.

  “Why is that so hard to believe?”

  I held out my glass, and he poured me another. I drank it down, then did it again.

  “You really the owner?” I asked.

  Peter nodded.

  “You’re good at prejudging people, aren’t you,” he said.

  “I just asked if you were the owner,” I countered.

  “Yes, but you must find it impossible to believe that someone who looks as nondescript as me could have an MBA and own a multi-million dollar piece of property in one of the most expensive parts of New York.”

  “You have an MBA?”

  “Sure do,” he said. “It was an accident, really. Bad time in my life, when I didn’t know what I wanted to be. I went back to school to try to find myself.”

  “And did you?”

  “I did. But the MBA had nothing to do with it. That was all a big waste of time, if you ask me. I found this land in the mountains, and I knew I wanted to build on it. I built five cabins, then ten. Now I’ve got seventeen across a span of two hundred acres. It’s worth millions.”

  “Wow.” I thought of the risk and the guts and the determination it had taken to do all of that.

  “There were a series of chance meetings that led me to this, of course. Before, I only dreamed about the mountains. But then I met people who inspired me along the way.

  He looked directly at me.

  “Son, there are people sent to all of us. Angels, you know. We all got ’em.”

  “You think?” I wondered if he heard doubt in my voice.

  He nodded. “Guardian angels.”

  I laughed. “You really believe that?” I shook my head. “I don’t believe in all that metaphysical stuff.”

  “So what you’re really saying is that you don’t believe in the things you can’t see.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t sure anymore. To be certain, there were things that were unexplained. Things had happened that defied any sort of reason.

  In the days prior to the accident I’d been warned. I’d felt anxious, as if there was an unsettling in my soul.

  Take a day off and spend it with Boo, I wrote into the memo section of my Blackberry. These moments are all you have.

  Boo was asleep in the next room when I’d done that, and before I knew it, the day was gone again, and I had missed the chance. I never did take a day off.

  In all of her four years of life, not one day.

  Now, we were together but not.

  “Peter, you’re not what you seem,” I observed.

  “Jonathan, welcome to the Adirondacks. Stay awhile. You’re going to leave better than you came.”

  Chapter 4

  THE INTERSECTION

  In an instant they were gone.

  Team Taylor, up in flames just like that.

  After the call I raced to the intersection and watched from the side of the road. Paramedics surrounded the car, and I dove into it through the window in a frantic search for Boo, flames tearing at my pant leg, the fire biting at the fabric of my shirt, searing it until it crumbled like ash.

  Lacy was already gone. The ambulance had taken her away.

  Someone, a paramedic maybe, pulled, pushed—maybe both—to get me out of the window of the Ford Explorer. My upper body slid through the space where the other window had been on the opposite side as they dragged me by the arms over shards of glass and more flames.

  My bloody face hit the pavement, and a chunk of glass lodged in the side of my cheek. The smoke stung my eyes, a shield of gray and black.

  I turned back and saw the soccer ball sticker on the windshield, melting away.

  A backpack on the ground?

  A man stumbling?

  Both cars were black, a mixture of metal bonded together as one.

  When it was all over, I woke up in a hospital room, panicked and physically restrained. My face and arms were bloody, and I realized instantly that I’d have to play the game to get out.

  “How are you feeling, Mr. Taylor?”

  A handful of doctors hovered by the bed. A nurse held my hand, but her expression of compassion mixed with pity gave it all away.

  They were gone.

  “I’m numb,” I said, and choked back a scream. “But I’m okay.” The last part wasn’t true.

  A week later, the police report came in and there had been a witness—a fifty-year-old woman who said she’d never get over what she saw that day. A black F-150 had T-boned the Explorer after Lacy had forgotten to stop.

  Forgotten? I read the lines on the photocopied report and knew it couldn’t be right.

  Forgotten? The witness reported that even after the impact, with the car upside down, the driver had reached into the backseat, fumbled and fought for her daughter’s seat belt. Lacy had tried to save Boo, even while the paramedics were trying to save Lacy.

  I continued reading.

  The driver locked the car door when paramedics approached to try to remove her from the Ford Explorer. As flames engulfed the vehicle, she fought to unbuckle her daughter from the car seat.

  Warrior mom would not leave her baby girl.

  Team Taylor, gone in an instant.

  On day two at the cabin I found the ground coffee in the cupboard, along with a container of powdered cream and even the vanilla flavoring that Lacy liked. I figured out the coffee maker, and before long I was standing out on the front porch in my bare feet, watching the sun rise.

  The grass was wet, and three squirrels fought or played in the pine trees in the yard. One ran fast, bouncing and swaying like an acrobat along the branches, with the others in hot pursuit. Across the sky, sailing one tree to another, then down the bark to the ground in a near-miss collision at the bottom.

  I stood there in my boxers and t-shirt and felt the warmth of the coffee mug inside my palm. The forest was alive, bustling with gentle sounds. A crew of bullfrogs sang and gulped to each other from around the back of the cabin near the pond. Birds called loudly from every crevice and corner. I turned to step back inside but stopped there, frozen on the deck. I stared at the inscription above the door.

  Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’ intrate.

  Latin? Italian? What did it mean?

  If I’d been home, I’d have Googled it to figure it out in moments.

  Here, I just pondered it awhile, then walked inside, pulled on the one pair of trousers I’d packed for the journey, and slid into my dirty t-shirt. I laced up my hiking boots over warm socks and set out around the back of the cabin toward the water. The ground was wet and slippery, and the canoe sat upside down at the edge of the pond near a small shed.

  I wandered over, and, when I ducked inside, I saw two other canoes tied to ropes on a shanty dock. I stepped out onto the wood planks suspended above the water and walked down the dock, leaning forward to untie the boat closest to me. Inside it were two orange life jackets, paddles, and an empty Coke can. I worked the knot for a while until it unfastened and then slid the canoe closer and stepped inside. The craft rocked left and then right as I steadied myself and found my footing.

  I sat down, hoisted the paddles into the water, and began rowing. My arms engaged in one full movement, then another, until I fell i
nto a rhythm. A fluid movement, one, two, three, I counted silently, with each perfect circle. My shoulders felt strong, and I inhaled the fresh mountain air.

  Get your body moving. Engage your senses.

  Be alive, Jonathan.